Tom Brokaw’s Chaotic, Garbled Universe

NBC’s less-than-éminence grise Tom Brokaw waxed a little poetic about the “very crowded universe” in national network/cable news today compared to his Star Trek days, when he was just as inconsequential. “There are a lot of planets out there, and some are colliding with one another," he said. “Some of them are drifting too close to the sun and burning up. Others seem to be supporting a different kind of life-form than anybody would have expected.”

Huh?

That’s not the way planets behave. Planets circle their suns in orderly, established orbits. The collisions occur early in the formation of a planetary system, when all that universal debris is still trying to sort itself out in its sun’s gravitational field. Or with the intrusion of outside destructive universe objects. (Hint, hint, Tom?)

Furthermore, planets do not drift too close too the sun and burn up. Other objects do — but not planets. Tom might have been mixing his metaphors with the Icarus legend, about the dude who flew too close to the sun and melted his wax wings, falling to his death. Or maybe he was thinking of Pluto, the nuts' ex-planet.

Confused, perchance sclerotic … ya think?

Asked if MSNBC was “better off” without Keith Olbermann, Brokaw replied coyly, “You're not going to get me to go there.” Gee Tom, I thought you had already with your bewildering astronomy metaphors.

“Listen,” said Tom the corporate tycoon. “We're better off than (ABC and CBS) because we do have cable. Where it got sticky is when our commentators were anchoring political coverage. Those are, in some ways, incompatible roles. We worked our way through that.”

Incompatible, why? Those of us who chose to watch MSNBC over NBC or ABC or CBS knew exactly what we were getting. We chose not to watch Brian ‘Yellow Hair’ Williams, David ‘Helo Head’ Gregory, or Tom ‘Marbles Mouth’ Brokaw because frankly y’all are YESTERDAY’S BORING ‘NEWS’ SNOBS with an arrogant top-down notion of the news and commentary WE,  the audience peons, should get. This patronizing view that YOU know what’s best for us and it’s planets Brokaw-Gregory-Williams is, well ... contemptible.

Brokaw, you can’t buy a fucking clue. Do you take the audience for fools who have to be spoon-fed a bunch of corporate media drivel? Do you really think NBC-MSNBC-CNBC is our sole source of information, that we don’t read the Times, Huff Post, WaPo, Politico, dozens of outstanding blogs, and watch serious broadcasts of the type you’re too timorous to provide? Do you think canceling Worst Persons and Psycho Talk was a service to the audience?

Fools.

And what’s with all the “we” this and “we” that and the other? Striking the obligatory humble corporatist tone (an obvious oxymoron) Brokaw said, “all of our component parts — NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC — are much bigger than one player, and I include myself in that. If I went away tomorrow, NBC News would still be the dominant news division in America. There ain't none of us who is irreplaceable.”

That’s nice to know, Tom, you old cliché-meister. IT’S JUST THAT WE THOUGHT YOU WERE ALREADY GONE, OFF TO (GREENER) PASTURES. I mean, we were really REALLY hoping! Tom, you sound like that cranky old uncle who’s overstayed your welcome, that no one can quite understand, and who just won’t take a hint.

But wait. Tom authored a forgettable and idiotic book about the 60s with a title taken from a 1972 McGovern pin — kinda like Lawrence Welk doing a book about Rock ‘n Roll. Y’know you’re right, Tom. You’re one totally replaceable component part. The sooner the better.